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In this column's debut a little over a year ago, I wrote that we at Barrons.com thought it high time to scrutinize the expanding body of online investment advice.

"Written by a combination of journalists, full- and part-time professional investors and analysts, and home-based hobbyists, the work is often well-reasoned and worth reading," I wrote of sites, including Seeking Alpha, Forbes.com and TheStreet. "But some articles generate more heat than light…Still worse, some articles have the taint of stock manipulation." (See Read This, Spike That, "Cutting Through the Stock-Advice Clutter," February 4, 2013.)

It seems like the lid is now being blown off of some of these sites when it comes to their susceptibility to stock manipulation.

What's clear is that this problem is more wide-ranging than I might have realized a year ago. There's plenty of evidence that it extends to sites that have morphed from more traditional journalism-based Websites into sites that use large number of "contributors," which is code for lots of private investors with skin in the game. The goal for these sites, of course, is to create additional advertising revenues by boosting page views, while keeping costs under control with writers who make a token fee for their work and get their health insurance elsewhere.

But this shift in the industry toward low-paid contributors has had an unintended consequence: occasional deceptive articles that can move a stock for the wrong reasons.

"While not all of the facts are clear, the websites admit that they were duped. In the past few weeks, more than 100 articles have been pulled from Seeking Alpha, Wall St. Cheat Sheet, and other websites that have been caught up in the stock promotion scheme," Gandel wrote.

Gandel, a veteran award-winning Fortune writer, describes how Forbes.com in late December published a favorable article about
CytRxCYTR 4.012345679012346%CytRx Corp.U.S.: NasdaqUSD3.37
0.134.012345679012346%
/Date(1427835600017-0500)/
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
592115AFTER HOURSUSD3.37
%
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
6336
P/E Ratio
N/AMarket Cap
180542519.147139
Dividend Yield
N/ARev. per Employee
5882.35More quote details and news »CYTRinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(ticker: CYTR), a small-cap biotech, written by a writer who has since been linked to the Dream Team Group, an investment-relations firm hired by CytRx. Within days of the article's publication, CytRx's stock rose nearly 50%.

But during this period, TheStreet, which has its own contributor network, also published articles that appear to be written by stock promoters, Gandel wrote. "TheStreet has since removed the articles and even took down a contributor page written by a writer tied to the investment-relations firm, The Dream Team Group, Gandel wrote.

Most disturbing is the fact that these articles had slipped through TheStreet's supposedly rigorous system of protections to prevent things like this from happening in the first place. Gandel quoted William Inman, TheStreet's editor-in-chief, saying that "contributors must sign a code of conduct and that all articles published by the site are edited by TheStreet staffers."

Gandel's article also says that Wall St. Cheat Sheet removed about 100 articles from its Website in the past two weeks that were written by individuals with ties to Dream Team.

"Wall St. Cheat Sheet CEO Damien Hoffman told Gandel that the "site is also no longer publishing contributor content." Gandel adds that Hoffman told him that he's "not sure how the crowdsourced contributor content model can be policed."

It seems that Wall St. Cheat Sheet has taken a big step to prevent being duped in the future. What's less clear is how far other sites will go to crack down on their contributor networks, given the role they play in the new economics of financial information.

Eli Hoffmann, Seeking Alpha's editor-in-chief, wrote in an e-mail to Barrons.com that his site recently implemented more "sophisticated IP address tracking" to better determine the identity of writers who seek to publish work on his site. We'll see how far that goes toward reducing instances of writers deceiving editors.

On Friday, I wrote a column that was critical of the experience level of the Seeking Alpha's contributors, pointing out that many are students and home-based hobbyists. I also suggested that the site reconsider its policy of allowing writers to use pseudonyms instead of their real names. (See Read This, Spike That, "Seeking Alpha Needs to Take Stock of its Policies," March 21.)

Many Barron's readers applauded the thrust of my column. But a sizable number also defended Seeking Alpha's "crowd-sourcing" model, which they view as more intellectually honest, even with its imperfections, than the kind of writing done at Barron's. Several pointed out that an unrestrained reader-comments section at the end of each Seeking Alpha article serves to rebut and correct weaknesses in articles.

"Many investors find the nameless retirees and college kids in their pajamas more credible than your Roundtable 'experts,'" wrote Chris Kondracki, a Barrons.com subscriber. "Your publication should consider offering a similar service."

With fan appreciation like this, one can only hope that Seeking Alpha and other contributor-based sites make an effort to better resist the stock promoters that never seem to go away.